(Photo: Adam Smith)
 

LUCERO frontman BEN NICHOLS reveals the stories behind each song on his debut solo album, The Last Pale Light In The West, which is being issued this week on vinyl for the first time by Sabot Productions. The album is based on the book Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, author of No Country For Old Men and The Road.

Last Pale Light In The West
This is the only song on the album not named after a character from Blood Meridian. It's actually part of an obscure sentence towards the end of the book and I thought it sounded nice. A lot of McCarthy's books, as bleak as some of them are, have at least a sliver of hope in them. I thought it made a good theme and title for a record.  

The Kid
The Kid is the main character in Blood Meridian. The Judge, who might just be the devil himself, is the Kid’s nemesis. This song sums up part of the Kid’s story from the Judge’s point of view. I couldn’t resist borrowing the line, “Drink up, drink up... Tonight your soul’s required of you.” It’s different in the book, but that’s the general sentiment. This is something the Judge tells the Kid in the final scene of the novel. That’s why I wrote this record really, because there were so many good images and lines in the book that I thought would work great in songs.

Davy Brown
He’s a mean son of a bitch—a killer who rode with the Glanton Gang when they were hired by the Mexican government to hunt and scalp Apaches. He doesn’t care if the Judge is the devil or not. He wears a string of ears cut from the people he’s killed. He is ruthless and a badass, but he still ends up at the end of a rope. 

Chambers
This is the first song I wrote for this record. Chambers is a very minor character and only in the book for a couple of pages, but McCormac describes his backstory a little bit, and I thought it would make a great song. I did a little research, added some details of my own and there it was. Basically, he was a U.S. soldier who falls in love with a Mexican girl during the Mexican War, but ends up with the Glanton Gang and things don’t turn out well for him.

Tobin
Tobin is an ex-priest that ended up as an outlaw with the Glanton Gang. He very much believes Judge Holden to be the devil. He says he saw cloven hoof prints in the rocks of a volcano that were once lava. He asks the Kid who other than the devil could walk on molten rock? Things don’t turn out well for him either.

Toadvine
This is my favorite character in the book. His ears were chopped off and he was branded on the forehead for various crimes. He’s got the best lines in the book: “What have you got that a man could drink with just a minimum risk of blindness or death.” That made it into the song. A couple of lines in the song are actually about the Kid, but they fit well in this song about Toadvine. The song as a whole about running out of country and having nowhere to go in a place where you can see for miles in every direction—is all about Toadvine.

The Judge
This is the only instrumental song on the record. It was written with Rick Steff (keyboard, accordion) and Todd Beene (guitar) in the studio right before we recorded it. The Judge is this huge, possibly supernatural presence in the book. He is brilliant and evil and scary as hell, and he says he’ll never die. I didn’t want to try to sum him up in the lyrics of a song, and this ended up being my favorite song on the record. alt